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Friday, January 5, 2018

The Thursday comedy lineups on CBS and NBC collided for the first time in 2018 (and just the second time all season), and it was a rout for the eye with big upticks all around. The Big Bang Theory (3.1) was close to even in Plus with its January opener last year, while Young Sheldon (2.6) was as usual a huge timeslot gainer and helped vault Mom (1.7) and Life in Pieces (1.3) to very nearly even year-to-year in raw numbers. S.W.A.T. (1.1) was back up to tie its series high rating at 10/9c.

The results were not as rosy on NBC. Superstore (1.1) and The Good Place (1.0) held up OK in the 8:00 hour but Will and Grace (1.4) was down to a new low, while Great News (0.6) had its worst performance yet with an original W&G lead-in. Chicago Fire managed to pull itself back up to a typical-ish 1.1 at 10/9c.

Fox kept going with its big January rollout as reality competition The Four (1.1/1.2) had a two-hour premiere. How it did depends on your expectations; the next American Idol or The Voice it is clearly not, but it's still possible it could do as well as or better than Gotham and The Orville from this fall.

Two weeks out from the return of TGIT, ABC had its first of two January Truth & Lies specials (1.1), this one on the 1993 Waco siege. It was nice filler, but a clear step below last year's Menendez murders special on the year-ago evening (1.7).